Folk

Anne Briggs: An Introduction

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Anne Briggs: An Introduction to Anne Briggs
Topic Records

“She was a rare thing, fine as a beeswing,’ sang Richard Thompson on Beeswing, a song widely held to be about the singer Anne Briggs. The elegiac tone employed by Thompson would have you believe that the subject of Beeswing is no longer of this world, and although Briggs is very much alive and well, her almost complete withdrawal from the public eye and refusal to record any new music since the early 1970s has lent her a kind of mythological status. She has always walked with one foot in another world, as it were.

It is not the music writer’s place to draw conclusions about Briggs’ character or search for clues as to why she turned her back on the music industry (from what I’ve seen, I’m surprised more artists don’t take a similar route), but to claim, on the basis of her music alone, that she is some kind of fragile elfin princess sleeping for a hundred years on a pillow of spiders’ webs is missing something. Sure, she was capable of singing with an unmatched delicacy, and her voice is rightly praised for its striking, crystalline beauty, but she was equally at home singing songs about bad working conditions, plucky poachers and dodgy sex. There was purity, but there was also earthiness, flirtatiousness and at times gutwrenching sadness.

In 1999 Topic released Anne Briggs: A Collection, which contained all of her 1971 self-titled debut album plus everything she had sung on prior to that (a clutch of EPs, including collaborations with Bert Lloyd and Ewan MacColl) – twenty-two songs in total. This followed the 1997 release of Sing A Song For You, which Briggs had recorded in 1973 and subsequently shelved due to doubts about her voice – doubts, it must be said, that weren’t shared by anyone lucky enough to hear the album. This new collection is part of Topic’s Introduction Series and contains fifteen songs cherry-picked from the aforementioned releases. The goal is clearly to entice new listeners who have yet to take the plunge, and in terms of quality it succeeds on pretty much every level.

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Jeff Beck “Greensleeves”

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British guitar god Jeff Beck recorded the traditional song “Greensleeves” on 1968’s Truth – the only acoustic cut on the album, but a glorious one, indeed.

There is a persistent belief that Greensleeves was composed by Henry VIII for his lover and future queen consort Anne Boleyn. Boleyn allegedly rejected King Henry’s attempts to seduce her, and this rejection may be referred to in the song when the writer’s love “cast me off discourteously”.

However, the piece is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after Henry’s death, making it more likely to be Elizabethan in origin. [Wikipedia]

Richard Thompson speaks at Folk Alliance 

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Richard Thompson at 2018 Folk Alliance

Richard Thompson and John Oates separately discussed what’s kept their careers sustainable.

Thompson said his guitar-playing technique also evolved with the times. By using alternate tunings and bending the strings and the neck, he used the electric six-stringed instrument to create a sound “closer to the human voice” or to a bagpipe, especially when interpreting or extending Scottish folk traditions on songs like “A Sailor’s Life, “Matty Groves” and “Meet on the Ledge.”

Regarding his practice in recent decades of alternating solo acoustic performances and recordings with those of an electric band, Thompson said he likes the intimate solo concert because it’s “sort of like being in church. It’s heart to heart.”

 

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Davy Graham “Anji”

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Davy Graham is one of the most influential figures in the 1960s British folk revival. His finger picking inspired Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, John Martyn, and Jimmy Page.

Graham is probably best known for his acoustic instrumental composition, “Anji.” Bert Jansch recorded this song on his first self titled album in 1965. John Renbourn also recorded it, as did Paul Simon, on the Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds of Silence.